Apple has said it will stop selling its Xserve rack servers early next year, killing a product that has traditionally sold in low quantities.

In a statement published on its Web site, the company said it was "transitioning away from Xserve."

The Xserve will be available for purchase until Jan. 31. After that, users looking to upgrade from Xserve can choose alternatives in the Mac Pro or Mac Mini lines, both of which will be shipped with the Snow Leopard Server OS.

Apple is dropping the Xserve product as it morphs into a consumer-focused company. The company has shifted its focus away from the enterprise with the launch of iconic consumer products like the iPhone and iPad.

The Mac Pro towers, however, can surpass the Xserve in processor performance, Apple said. The Mac Pro comes with processors that include Intel's newest Xeon chips based on the Westmere architecture, introduced earlier this year. Those chips come with up to six processor cores.

The Xserve came with Intel's older Xeon server processors, based on the Nehalem architecture introduced last year.

The Mac Pro tower will come with up to 12 processor cores, up to 64G bytes of memory and up to four storage bays, with each slot accommodating up to 2T bytes of hard drive storage or up to 512G bytes of solid-state drive storage. The system will have expansion slots for Mac Pro RAID card and a Fibre Channel card.

In addition to Intel's Westmere six-core and quad-core chips, the Mac Pros are also available with Intel's older Nehalem quad-core chips.